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If you had a convenient time machine and gathered up say, a group Catholics from today, a group from 100 years ago, and a group from 1000 years ago, you'd have
by nitwit005 7y ago
If you had a convenient time machine and gathered up say, a group Catholics from today, a group from 100 years ago, and a group from 1000 years ago, you'd have three groups of people with radically different beliefs. They might even disagree with the idea they followed the same religion.
Part of what makes religions last is bending to the changing times. A lot of the ones that didn't have faded away.
- ineedasername 7y agoAn excellent point. There's even plenty of room within many religions for some degree of differences in belief. The buffet-style Catholic comes to mind. But I think a fundamental difference between religions & corporations is that religious institutions have fewer incentives to make decisions that favor the short term over the long term. That, combined with the flexibility to change (even if at a glacial place as religions often do) may be the key to their longevity.
- ineedasername 7y agoI don't have a "convenient" time machine, only an "inconvenient" one. It travels only in one direction, forward, and at much the same pace as everyone else seems to travel. There's always the example of Merlin though, whose time-machine-body traveled only in the opposite direction at roughly the same pace as everyone else's went forward. It has to be awkward for your first meeting with someone to be their last meeting with you. And you can't even warn them about their future when you meet them further in their past: Their future has already happened. A truly frustrating existence. No wonder King Arthur's court collapsed inward upon adulterous scandal and fanatical seeking of religious artifacts.